Monthly Archives: January 2016

These friends are friends that have cooked a special birthday meal for us and have given us such wonderful gifts, we’re very blessed to have met them all, so we certainly wanted to return the favor with a special treat for them!

I wasn’t raised on very spicy foods…actually, I’d really label my childhood as pretty “vanilla” when it came to any sort of spiciness. But hey! That’s okay, because my very favorite ice-cream flavor just so happens to be vanilla! Ha-ha! I’m wild, I know!

Most know this little factoid, however some readers do not, my husband and I were both born and raised right in the same area of Central Pennsylvania. So a lot of our childhood experiences with, places, family traditions, and local foods, are very similar and easy to reminisce about together. (The Sub Shop, Knoebels Grove, ham loaves, growing up with grandparents that we’re practically parents, experiencing 4 seasons!)

So that brings me back to us chatting about if he too experienced a similar spice-less existence? Outside of childhood candy like warheads and cinnamon balls, he too was rather “vanilla”. Ha-ha! Womp-womp.

Fast forward to our adventures in Korea and you’d think we were two totally different people! Our taste have done some sort of crazy flip-flop and we crave and cannot get enough spice! We’re always testing our limits ordering more spice, telling the Korean restaurants, “The spicier the better”. Yes, quite the duo we are, what a spectacle when we’re eating spicy squid together.

The spicy thing is just one thing that’s boggling my mind lately when I really sit back and think about it. It sounds so elementary and simple, like, ohhh wow! You are adults your taste have changed.. WOW…

No! They really, really have! Our tastebuds have aged, as we have.

Here’s another fun giggle for you.. We thought we were really “cooking” when we first got married and purchased our first home. We’d take a weekend trip North to SAMs Club and pick up frozen individual breaded eggplants. We’d bake them in the oven and top them off with spaghetti sauce and shredded mozzarella. Boom! We were so proud! (In our defense, they were/are pretty tasty.)

Again, fast-forward and change countries, now we frequent our local vegetable stand weekly, try to stay away from most processed foods, and haven’t purchased an actual loaf of bread in 6 months? We bake our own loaf about bi-weekly. Pantry staples are now giant jars of jalapeños, Coleman’s English mustard, and a plethora of spices to take our foods up another heat notch and flavor (outside of being the chronic black-pepper food coater that I am.)

Perhaps all of the reasons and then some are why we make such a big deal about being together in our kitchen cooking and creating? Whatever the reasons, we’re certainly blessed with this time, the resources, and really hope to continue to encourage our friends, family and readers to get into their kitchen and menu plan, create some foodie-magic too!

I now present to you, a little hodgepodge of our past week spicy meals. Enjoy!

This was the second time we have dined at the bistro and what brought us back was the romantic yet casual vibe, the very attentive staff (each visit the management has struck up a conversation with us and you can just feel their passion for their customers and business) and of course the delicious French cuisine!

On this trip, Ms. B ordered the burger for the second time, not a typical move on her part. The rest of the table was so convinced with her past experience, wouldn’t you know that they too followed suit. (Eek! Pressure was on!)

Yes, we DO realize that not many people would associate the French cuisine with a “burger”, but to us, this bistro certainly trophied the burger points on the scorecard for the French! They made their country proud!

So the burger… It was a bit different from the first time we had visited, however the basis of the burger, a mixture of lamb and beef combination, still shone through with its distinctive taste.

The first burger featured mushrooms, beet root, and bechamel cheese very creatively. (Photo on Instagram)

This time the burger was a bit more traditional with a nice cut of bacon, fresh lettuce, tomato, onion, topped with ground mustard sauce, and cheese. Délicieux!

This was the second time that we ordered the French onion soup as well. Mmmmmm… One can never go wrong on a very cold day with slowly cooked, caramelised onions that are both mellow and sweet in the perfect broth, topped off with a crusty bread and thick melted cheese.

We find ourselves together back here again at the end of the week. Can I get a Fri-YAY!?

While I know we observed MLK day and we had a shorten week compared to most, it just seemed to sort of drag on and on…what do you think? Perhaps it was the REALLY cold temperatures we’ve been experiencing as of late? Whatever the case, let’s get throw in another Fri-YAY! 😉

So what’s been cooking in your kitchen? Do share, we’d love to hear! In the meantime we will share just what’s been going on in ours…

Mr. B made a recipe from his grandparents cookbook dating back to 1949! Beef porcupines. Don’t worry there were no porcupines harmed in the making of the recipe haha! These little guys get their name from the way the rice pops out of the beef when they are done cooking.
Oh Lordy were they absolutely delicious! I know Mr. B made his grandpa proud that night!

We topped the pizza with mozzarella, tons of roasted veggies eggplant, yellow peppers, red peppers, red onions, mushrooms, homemade meatballs, cheese filled jalapeños and cracked an egg in the center because we’re crazy like that! Oh and a side of roasted jalapeños filled with melted cheese.

We even ventured into the land of homemade vegetable hummus too! (Hey it’s all about getting those veggies in, right?) Yeah…Green pea hummus to be exact. Pretty outstanding and will make many future appearances in this house. You can thank us for sharing later.

There are certain times throughout the year that I get very nostalgic about my childhood. So much so, I find myself shortly afterwards in our kitchen baking or making it simply to have a taste of the past. Make no mistakes, I enjoy adulthood and eagerly look forward to the future, but you know those days or moments when they hit you…

Today for me it’s homemade strawberry shortcake. Oh yes, a delicious family recipe that I covet, passed down generation to generation, butter, Crisco and all. No sharsies with this one folks. I know what you are thinking… Mmmm isn’t it sort of out of season to be longing for shortcake? Yes and no. I guess the great and not so great fact about the US is that at any time of the year you can get your hands on imported fruits and vegetables. I try not to be that gal, strive to purchase as much locally, plus we’re currently located in South Korea where local strawberries are divided into two growing seasons, summer and winter.

If you recall on a past blog post in the summer-ish we visited a nearby greenhouse and picked our own. With our winter berries we weren’t as adventures, we simply visit our local vegetable stand and purchase one or two containers a week. (They are that good!)

I enjoy learning more and more about anything that surrounds the topic of food. I found it very interesting when chatting up some Korean friends and locals that, the winter berries grown here are Maeyang strawberries, a cross and byproduct of two other strains of strawberries. I am told that these winter beauties yield a higher sugar content, because they are said to breath less at night, so unlike its sister summer berry, it loses far less nutrition, thus losing less of their precious sugar. I can absolutely attest to that! No need to sprinkle a dash of sugar on these little sweeties. Oh and the smell of the berries, imagine the best perfume in all the world!

During my childhood summers we’d always enjoy a nice size slice of shortcake topped with fresh local strawberries, sometimes cool-whip topping, but almost always soaked in a bowl of milk. This cake would accompany a bowl of parsley potatoes. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. Recently Skyping with my grandparents we had a good laugh because Mr. B couldn’t wrap this mind around the fact that there wasn’t any protein, and the fact that was the entire meal. Hahaha! I suppose it might sound odd to those out there reading this post too, but I confess those dinners as simple as they were, were the very best. My great-grandmother coined the statement that you had to have the salty with the sweet. The saltiness of the parsley potatoes and the sweetness of the strawberries. This was a grandmother that knew her foodie stuff, she’d rather enjoy her dessert served before any meal. I certainly belong to the correct bloodline.

While we didn’t serve parsley potatoes tonight with our strawberry shortcake (party-pooper Mr. B), we did enjoy an outstanding marinated grilled chicken with corn barley salad from Iowa girl eats. The link is here and we didn’t change a thing. We used our fresh corn on the cob that we shucked and froze when it was available. We know you’ll enjoy this hearty easy dish during the weeknight too!

So now it’s your turn to share your childhood meal nostalgia with us. Do you re-visit the past with any sorts of odd meals? We’d love to hear!

This year, like many past years, we didn’t make any official resolutions. But, I guess you can say this is sort of something we’ve decided to try to stick to in the new year. I guess you can say that goes along with a form of resolution, right?

Anywho. We did our first full week of dinner menu planning and it looked a little something like this.

We’re trying to incorporate a ton of veggies into our meals too. Oh! Plus I got my hot little hands on this really cute weekly menu planner stationary/ a store list. I cannot wait to share with you all! Stay tuned on Instagram. (Thanks Jenny!) We had a really good time sitting down together and planning meals from our cookbooks and must bake/make bucket-lists. I know it’s a time I’m going to look forward to in our future.

Our goals are to incorporate more veggies, take the stress out of any weekday scramble of what’s for dinner tonight, plus try to make fewer trips to the vegetable stand and grocery store. We will promise to keep you posted with delicious photos along the way. Follow us on Instagram if you aren’t already.

Speaking of delicious photos… This is one meal from our past week of dinner planning, minus the dinner salad. Meh. Sometimes you see one, you’ve seen them all.

On baking sheet, place pecans in single layer. Toast in oven at 350°F (180°C) for 5 to 7 minutes, or until golden brown and aromatic. Meanwhile, in heavy 1 qt
(950 mL) saucepan over medium-high heat, heat butter until golden brown. Serve hot butter over cooked ravioli and top with pecans.

Banana bread is just SO easy to whip up, and to be completely frank, we always seem to have two bananas lying around from the bunch that are on their last leg. It’s almost like the food gods are telling us to just reserve those two just for the excuse to bake up a fresh loaf. Haha! Okay… Maybe not… but it is a great excuse right?!

I find that with banana bread I’m always challenging myself to make it differently each time. A tweak here, an addition of this ingredient there, etc. Heck sometimes I just open up our cabinets and throw whatever I can get my hands on into the batter.

But for blogging and sharing sake, I actually typed out quickly what went into this loaf.

Are you ready? (“Because this shi* is bananas!”) SORRY! Couldn’t resist!

I decided a banana bread would pair well with coconut….so that’s just what I did…. And my predictions were spot on! Don’t you just love when that happens? Yeah, me too!

Before popping into the oven, I topped the bread off with a little mixture of sweetened and unsweetened shredded coconut flakes for that additional flaky texture, man was it a game changer! Mr. B couldn’t resist topping his with homemade whipped cream left over from a cake I made.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C), and grease or butter a 4×8-inch loaf pan.

In a mixing bowl, mash ripe bananas with a fork until they are smooth. Stir the melted coconut oil into the mashed bananas.

Next, mix in the baking soda and salt. Stir in the coconut sugar, beaten egg, and coconut extract. Mix in the flour and shredded coconut flakes.

Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Use reserved 2 Tablespoons of shredded coconut by sprinkling over the top of the loaf. Bake for 1 hour (check at 50 minutes, depending on your oven) at 350°F (175°C), or until tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Whew! It’s officially 2016! I know each year I say this…but… where does the time go?!? We just keep blinking and years are flying by. Is this another adulthood realization/moment that stinks? ….I think so!

We, much like you, have got so very many blessings in 2016 to look forward to! Perhaps our best baked goods yet…

So, What exciting things did you do to ring in the New Year? Did you get all dolled up? I was loving the sparkly dresses posted on Social media! How about making it until midnight to snag that good-luck kiss? Wink-wink. Tell us!

Well…we loved living in our own little world this New Years Eve. We went out in style New Years Eve. Yep. Total party animals here! HAHA…We celebrated by cooking up a storm in our cozy kitchen at home. An outstanding homemade four course dinner. We toasted (way before midnight) with sparkling cider and Belgium beer.

So what was this dinner we devoured and taunted our friends and family on Facebook with? Oh boy! Glad you asked, because you are now going to get a play by-play!

The first course up was hot bacon dressing using homemade mustard, bacon, shallots and vinegar. For those of you not familiar with hot bacon dressing, it is a very nostalgic memory of Sunday dinners in our families Pennsylvania kitchen. We modified and tweaked a bit to feature Korean pork AKA Samgyeopsal. It was excellent if we may say so. If you’re curious, this cut of meat is thick, fatty slices of pork belly meat. Oh and it just melts in your mouth when grilled to perfection too! Order this next time cut of meat when you find yourself in a Korean restaurant.

The third course, seared ahi tuna crusted with sesame seeds and black pepper. The marinade was sesame oil, soy sauce and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Just when I thought the meal couldn’t get any better the tuna made its cameo and completely blew our minds.

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